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Guys like playing as girls in World of Warcraft; girls, not so much

The female population in World of Warcraft is a lot smaller than you think, as the game is populated with guys moonlighting as girl characters. This is the takeaway from a new study on the realm of ogres and magic pandas, which found that while 26 percent of male players chose the opposite gender for their avatar, only 7 percent of females played as males. The study also noted some unique behavior among males posed as females, such as more frequent use of emotional phrases and emoticons. Another interesting tidbit is that these guys were much more frolicsome than the average player, and by that I mean they tended to jump more.

Granted the sex-swapping survey conducted by researchers at Syracuse University had a small sample size of 375 players, but it’s potentially illuminating about our relationships with non-playable characters and gender orientation. Not to toot our own horn, but we do have this feature on the subject if you’d like to explore it further. PBS Game/Show had a great episode on it, also.

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Jason Johnson

Jason Johnson is a staff writer for Kill Screen. His favorite game is Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2.